They decided to put their embryos up for adoption so another couple struggling to conceive could be parents - then the mums became great friends

Modern family: Jodie and Rachel with their men and daughters (Photo: Marissa Charles Media)

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Sitting in the living room, chatting as their daughters Bobbie, four, and 18-month-old Esther read books together, Jodi Dillworth and Rachel Victorin look like any other young mums on a typical playdate.

But the reality is far more complicated.

Jodi and Rachel are not related, but their daughters are. They’re sisters.

And while Rachel is Esther’s mum, Jodi is in fact the toddler’s biological mother after having a procedure called embryo adoption – where a woman is impregnated with an embryo donated by a couple who’ve undergone IVF.

“Rachel and I will watch them playing and say: ‘It’s so weird how they do things alike or how they look similar’,” says Jodi, 41.

“But it’s not really because they are sisters.”

Over a year after meeting, Jodi considers Rachel to be part of her family and the two mums, from Tacoma, Washington, US, are raising their daughters as sisters.

They’re like TV’s Modern Family, but the situation is not legally possible in the UK.

While an infertile couple in Britain can have a baby via embryo adoption, they are not allowed to find out the donor couple’s identity, and the child cannot know any details that could identify their biological parents until they are 18.

Jodi and Rachel, 39, are a positive example of what can happen when all of that information is available.

Yet when Jodi decided to put her embryos up for adoption she didn’t want contact with the woman who would have the children.

“I felt it was fairer for both families to be separate,” she says.

“I felt the woman would have a lot of insecurities as a first-time mum.

"I had read about adoptions where families worried the biological mother might want the baby back.”

Both the donor family and the couple wanting to adopt the embryos had to put together a book of information about themselves.

One of the couples wanting to adopt were Rachel and Diony Victorin, a paediatric nurse and graduate student in Seattle.

They wanted biracial embryos after four unsuccessful rounds of IVF made them think they would never have biological children.

“I liked Rachel and Diony because they took the time to write a three-page letter telling us about themselves,” says Jodi.

“In the photo album there were lots of pictures of them by the ocean, which is my favourite place in the world to be. I liked that they would be taking the baby there.”

After agreeing to Rachel and Diony, 40, adopting her embryos, Jodi thought her involvement had finished.

“Larry and I wanted to stay away,” she says. “If they needed any medical information we wouldn’t mind exchanging that through the adoption agency.

"But I was content to give them a chance at parenthood.”

In February 2011, two of the embryos were implanted into Rachel, and one got her pregnant.

Two months later, the agency shared the news with the Dillworths.

“That’s when my emotions kicked in,” says Jodi.

“I think I hadn’t taken myself to a place where this could be a reality.

"I was in shock but ecstatic for Rachel as I know what it’s like when you find out you’re pregnant.”

On September 28, 2011 Rachel and Diony welcomed baby Esther into the world.

Two weeks later they sent the Dillworths some photos and a thank you letter via the adoption agency.

“When I first saw Esther she looked so much like my daughter Bobbie it was rather weird,” says Jodi.

Still, when the adoption agency suggested she meet Rachel, Jodi said she thought things were fine the way they were.

But Rachel had a very different perspective. She says: “I have an adopted brother and a foster brother, both of whom had struggled with being separated from their biological families. I didn’t want that for my child.

“I wanted her life to be richer because of Jodi and Larry. You can never have too many people that love you.

" I wanted Esther to grow up thinking embryo adoption is normal and not reach 16 and have an identity crisis.”